Sara Ludy's video works will be on the front page of rhizome.org all week as part of the ongoing online digital painting exhibition "Brushes," presented by Rhizome and the New Museum for the First Look series.

For this series of abstract video works, originally created for the online collaborative w-a-l-l-p-a-p-e-r-s.net, Sara Ludy begins with images created in Adobe Photoshop using the "Difference Clouds" feature, which alters color levels in an image according to cloud-like patterns. This software-generated image is then imported into Adobe Aftereffects, where Ludy adjusts preset parameters to create these swirling cloud patterns. In part, the works are an investigation of the aesthetics inherent in the software tools—but unlike artists such as Cory Arcangel, who previously explored such "default" aesthetics in his Photoshop gradient series, Ludy allows more latitude for her own improvisation, seeking out visual complexity that transcends the seemingly mundane origins of her imagery.

Sometime in 1987, you were sitting on a beach in Bora Bora, looking at To'opua island, enjoying a holiday with a very serious boyfriend. The serious boyfriend, John, took a photograph of you sitting on the beach, not wearing your bikini top. John later became your husband and father to your children Sarah, Lisa, Alex and Jane.

This photograph of a beautiful moment in your personal history has also become a part of my history, and that of many other people; it has even shaped our outlooks on the world at large. John's image of you became the first image to be publicly altered by the most influential image manipulation program ever.

"gif. jpg. png. tif. (gjpt)," an exhibition currently on display at HEREart , explores the relationship between standardized digital image formats and visual representation. Curated by Jess Ramsay and featuring work by Jason Huff, Jordan Tate and Adam Tindale, Seyhan Musaoglu, and Giselle Zatonyl, the exhibition demonstrates how fully digital imaging has permeated visual culture. The works in the exhibition approach the pixel as a key structural component of visual representation, manipulating it to expose the formal characteristics of digital media.

It could be argued that template-style exploitable memes are the bread-and-butter of image board communities like those found on 4chan. Taking a popular, strange, or funny image and editing it down to the simplest components allows them to be photoshopped into a variety of contexts. It's easy and allows for a wide range of iterations, many of which gesture back to previous memes to construct intricate networks of reference that require elaborate explanations and complex genealogies to decipher. Some of the most popular template memes come from 4chan's Cartoons and Comics board /co/, and usually involve stripping a drawn image to it's most basic outlines so that it can be adapted to various popular cartoon or comic characters. Popular examples include Optimized Gif Dude (2006), Gentlemen (2006), fsjal (2008), and X Everywhere (2010).

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[The Original Image]

Handsome Face is a image that first appeared in mid-September of 2010 on /co/ and was quickly made a template by 4chan user Shore Leave !!T2UdrWkLSWB. This original image is taken from a scene from the 2010 animated film Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. The face was generally regarded as "handsome" in a way that seemed comical and overly sincere, as though he were about to say something heartfelt to another character. Soon it was coupled with the text template "X, I . . ." where X is a character, concept, or object that could be humorously paired with the original. An iteration using the Joker might be captioned "Batman, I . . .", or one made to look like Shaggy from the group Insane Clown Posse might be captioned "Magnets, I . . ." in reference to the much-parodied ICP music video Miracles (2009).

[The Template]

The meme points to the complex network of reference that makes up the template format, as well as the call-and-response solicitation that helps to propagate ...

Extended Aurora, 2010
The Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard wallpaper, Aurora, with white area added to the sides of the image and then put through content-aware fill

Extended Bliss, 2010
The default Windows XP wallpaper, Bliss with area added to the sides, then put through content-aware fill

Extended Future Is Yours, 2010The Windows 7 "Future is Yours" wallpaper, with white area added to the sides of the image and then put through content-aware fill

A series of images with white area added to the sides and then put through Content-Aware Fill (a Photoshop CS5 tool that automatically generates content based on the existing content of the image and fills in the surrounding blank space). The resulting image is an extended view as interpreted by the software.